


Occupational Hazard

by onceuponachildhood



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Gen, Kidnapping, Language, M/M, Memory Loss, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 11:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1263886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponachildhood/pseuds/onceuponachildhood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hey, nobody said the spy business was easy. Often, once you’re an agent you don’t make it out alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Onset

“Wuggles!” Michael snorted into his beer. “You’re goddamn lucky Haywood hasn’t scalped you or some shit by now.”

Gavin squawked. “Rye-bread? Scalp me? You’re nuts, Michael. He’s a great agent, yeah, but he was complaining about a couple of bullets. Not scary at all.”

“I would’ve fucking punched you in the head if you’d gotten me shot for some dumb shit like that, Gavin.”

“But Michael-”

Michael held up a hand. “Clearly, you’ve not heard about Haywood’s track record before joining the Hunters. With your upbringing, I’m not surprised. But don’t think for a goddamn minute that Haywood is harmless. We’re lucky he’s on our side.” Michael tipped his glass back, draining the last of his drink before standing. “You good to get back on your own?”

“Yeah. See ya later, my boy.” Gavin sat for a while by himself in the bar, enjoying the quiet. The bar might have been loud but the noise allowed him to turn his brain off for a bit and just sit. He drank a beer, and another, and another, before he decided that he should head home. When he stood he felt a bit dizzy, which was weird. Had he had more bevs that he thought?

It was only when he got about halfway down the block and his vision began blurring that he realized that something was wrong. He stumbled, pressing a hand against the gritty brick of some old building. “What the…?” His legs trembled but he fought to stay upright. His face, hands- they felt numb. He reached into his pocket, where his communicator still rested. His fingers fumbled against it. His fingers felt stiff. Wooden. Gavin took another step forward, more leaning against the wall than standing upright. He cursed under his breath before a knee buckled and he toppled over, eyes shuttering closed.


	2. Effrontery

When Gavin woke, the first thing he noticed was the pain in his shoulders. His line of work, pain wasn’t exactly a stranger to him. Yet this was different. This pain was dull, throbbing- like his shoulders were replaced with big bruises. Bruises for shoulders. The pain seeped its way down his arms as the fog cleared from his brain. He almost wished that the fog was back, as his waking caused him to move and the pain shoved its way to the forefront of his mind. It was another moment before he realized that his arms hurt so badly because they had been holding up all of his weight. His knees were bent and his feet were pressed wrongways against the floor. He swallowed, feeling the scratch of his dry throat. “Now or never.”

Before he could change his mind he scrambled to get his legs straight and his feet properly on the floor. Everything was beyond hurt- his entire body screamed at the injustice that was being conscious. His head throbbed and his chest felt as if it’d been flayed open. His legs- well, Gavin was glad he couldn’t feel them. He was sure he didn’t need more pain on top of what he could already feel. As it was, he could feel tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. How utterly embarrassing, an agent of the Hunters, crying from a little physical pain.

Right. An agent. Gavin struggled to regain enough of his thought space to actually think. He’d been captured. Drugged at the bar the night before, it seemed. He glanced around the room he was in. It was bare. A grey, dimly-lit sort of space. Chains came down from a bar in the ceiling, which Gavin was attached to by some rough-looking manacles. Of course, part of the reason they looked rough was because of his blood that had gotten on them from his wrists. They must have cut into him as he was hanging. He blinked in favor of shaking his head, which he assumed would hurt like hell, and returned to his survey. There was no door he could see. He started to twist around to check behind himself, and the scabbed-over wounds on his torso from something ripped open again. He groaned.

“Now now, Mister Free, you’ll have to be careful.” Footsteps behind him. He struggled to maintain his composure, even as he could feel blood trickling down his sides. “You’ll reopen more wounds, and if you lose too much blood you’ll die.” A stranger, which was oddly comforting- if someone in the biz had a grudge, that could be worse than death- stood in front of him. Someone cleanly dressed, with latex gloves and an even more plastic smile.

Gavin mustered up his best glare.

“Is that any way to treat a gracious host, Mister Free?” The man tilted his head. “Strange, for someone with a pedigree like yours to get into a business like this.” Gavin didn’t want to think about how this man knew who he was. He didn’t like not having the upper hand. Why else would he work in high-risk information jobs? “And to leave something like this around-” the man held up a small flash drive Gavin recognized as one from his last job- “with your fingerprints on it was just sloppy.”

He grunted. “What do you want, arsehole?”

The man tittered. Really, Gavin would describe it no other way, except for maybe calling the man a tit. “So rude to your gracious host! I haven’t even asked you for anything yet, and already the name-calling?” He clucked his tongue. “Honestly, you were raised better than that.”

“Fuck off.”

Something in the man’s expression darkened. Gavin didn’t have time to name the change before the man had stepped forward and jabbed a gloved finger into one of the chest wounds. Gavin moaned, leaning back away from the assault. “Impertinent scamp. I’ve only got one question for you, and the least you could do is answer it in a civilized manner.”

“Yeah? You call this civilized?” Gavin wheezed.

“Retaliation, Mister Free. You did steal something of mine, so it’s only fair.” There was a sort of morbid irony in watching a finger be wagged at him while covered in his own blood, Gavin thought. “But that’s not the important thing here. What I need to know is who you stole it for. Now, if you tell me, that’ll be the end of it and I’ll send you on your merry way.” A pause, thick with suggestion of awfulness. “If not, there might not be much left of you to send once I get the name out of you.” The man smiled, teeth bared in a mockery of politeness. “So it’s really in your best interest to fess up now.”

There was another long, nasty pause. The two stared at each other, eye contact a challenge. It was Gavin who looked away first, letting out a breath in a shuddering gust. He moved his lips, but no sound came out. The man moved closer. A soft mumble, but Gavin made sure he was still unintelligible. The greed was evident in his captor’s eyes, so Gavin waited for him to step close enough so that he could hear the whispered words. “Eat shit.” Gavin lunged forward as far as he could, teeth snapping closed on something soft and fleshy. The man’s screams were worth the blood that trickled into Gavin’s mouth, and he held back his gag even as he spat out his captor’s earlobe.

“You little fucker!” He clutched the side of his head. “You’re going to regret that with your last breath!” Gavin grinned, his teeth painted red. He held the grin until the man had stormed out, and then he hung his head. It was going to be a painful last few days, but at least he’d left a mark of his own.


	3. Deliverance

It was the shouting that pulled Gavin from his pain-induced stupor. He could hear it, muffled though it was by the walls of the hell-pit he’d been in for… huh. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been there, or had lost count after a few days and strange periods of unconsciousness. Those were a welcome change from his current state of mind, no matter how much it drove him crazy that he didn’t know how long he’d been trapped. Tortured. It felt like years. It was certainly more than a few days; he’d been given fluids through an IV at some point or another, but ever since his little earlobe adventure he’d been gagged. Yet beyond the pain he could feel the delirium of dehydration, and his head swam from blood loss just as much as his screaming nerve endings.

The shouting sounded like it was getting louder. Gavin wasn’t entirely sure. His hearing had been somewhat futzy after the fifth session with the man he now thought of as ‘The Bastard.’ The thought that really kept him going was watching The Bastard die, or knowing that when he finally succumbed to The Bastard’s torture that someone- Geoff, Michael, anyone- would slaughter him.

No, Gavin could definitely hear something. There was shouting and thumping and then screaming. He listened to the screams that might have trailed off into gurgles before silence reigned again. It was strange to think that maybe someone else was being tortured. Certainly that wasn’t anyone coming to rescue him. Yet the silence after all that noise was something… odd. Maybe in another lifetime Gavin would have cared. Before The Bastard, he had been something. Something important? Something good? He wasn’t sure. He almost wanted to believe that he had been something dangerous. But hanging here, not even feeling his arms, he couldn’t imagine ever being dangerous. He was stubborn and silent, but not dangerous.

He could hear noise now, right outside the door to his prison. There was a voice. A familiar voice. Not The Bastard. Someone… else. He couldn’t find it in the haze of his thoughts. He just hoped the someone wasn’t here to continue The Bastard’s work. The door flew open with a bang that made Gavin jerk away instinctively. The motion  _hurt_ , like he hadn’t felt since his first days here in the hellhole. He felt a groan force its way from his throat, the sound muffled by his gag, and the taste of blood caused him to shudder. “Gavin!” The familiar voice knew him too, apparently. The owner of the voice reached above Gavin, tugging at his chains, and where their bodies touched Gavin’s pain sprang to life. This new person lowered his chain, slow and steady, so that Gavin was able to sink to the floor. His numb shoulders and legs could rest. He could rest. Gavin felt a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding leave him in one long exhale as the cool floor pressed against a throbbing cheek.

There were hands, painful despite their care, at the back of his head. The tension of the gag relaxed and Gavin spit it out without any hesitation. “Oh Gavin.” His rescuer somehow found the one spot on his skull that didn’t hurt, and ran fingers through his hair. “You in there, Gav?” His throat was a desert, sands of dried blood that buried his voice. He couldn’t answer. He felt warmth over his face- a sigh, a prayer?- before that voice spoke again. “Let’s go home.” The rescuer’s arms hurt as they lifted him, but at least he was going home.


	4. Denouement

“How’s he doing?”

Michael glanced over at the agent who had settled next to him. Ryan had seen better days. From tender purple bags under his eyes and stubbly cheeks to wrinkled pants and hastily-buttoned shirt, it was evident that Agent Haywood was a wreck. He allowed the agent to sit a moment and watch Gavin for himself. Gavin, who was on a treadmill on the other side of the gym’s glass, seemed to be in his own world. The only place he seemed to be more comfortable than he now did in the gym was the shooting range. In the three months since his capture, Michael and Geoff had done their best to make Gavin comfortable. Two of those months, Michael realized, where Ryan hadn’t spoken to or seen Gavin at all. There was tension in Ryan’s body; his posture suggested he was ready to run in there if Gavin so much as stumbled. Michael pondered this for a moment. Ryan’s dedication and focus on Gavin transcended that of just an agent and partner.

Ryan leaned back to see Michael’s raised eyebrow, and he let out a breath. “Not good, huh?”

Michael also allowed himself to sit back, trusting Ryan to let him know if Gavin needed something in the gym. “He’s still adjusting to people who he doesn’t remember. Unfamiliar people make him jumpy.” Ryan nodded. “He mostly only recognizes me and Geoff, though he did remember Caleb’s name yesterday. We’ve been suggesting to have him meet people he knew-”

“We walk around him on bloody eggshells.” Both Ryan and Michael turned to face Gavin, who had slipped from the gym and now stood before them in his sweats. “Who’s this, Michael? No, wait, don’t tell me.” He gave Ryan a wry grin that almost made up for the sting of his unremembering. “The head doc says it’s good for me to try to remember stuff about people on my own.”

“He remembered that I like My Little Pony yesterday,” Michael added helpfully.

Gavin snorted. Composed himself. Turned his focus to Ryan and tried to remember. Ryan, for his part, sat quietly and let his gaze focus just behind Gavin so that his partner could think without being watched. There were a few moments of quiet, enough that Michael shifted once or twice like he was awkwardly trying to not be there.

Eventually, Gavin did speak. “Something about… bread?” Ryan looked at Gavin then, hoping that his eagerness wasn’t too evident in his face. He couldn’t help but feel some sort of joy that Gavin might remember him. “You’re name’s not bread, is it?”

“You called me Rye-bread.” Gavin’s eyes went wide. “Rye-bread instead of Ryan.”

“I know that voice.” Gavin whispered it, taking a small shaky step towards the agent.

Michael ignored the hopeful glance that Ryan gave him, instead responding to Gavin’s first question he’d asked. “This is Agent Ryan Haywood, your partner in the Hunters.”

“Pick me up.” The quiet command, the confidence that Gavin said it with, killed any argument that either man on the bench had. They both knew that Gavin had been particularly wary of physical contact since his containment. But his jaw was set and his gaze was steady.

Ryan stood, slowly so as to not seem like a threat, and stepped closer. It was the closest he’d been to Gavin since the other agent had gotten out of his hospital bed. When he spoke, his voice was gentle but not hesitant. “If you need, just say the word and I’ll back off.” Gavin nodded. Ryan moved with a tenderness that Michael had not expected. He put an arm under Gavin’s legs at his knees and another at his mid-back, lifting the smaller agent with no trouble.

Gavin looked into Ryan’s eyes, his own shining with the threat of tears. “It was you,” Gavin breathed. “You came for me. You brought me home.”


End file.
